How does Virginia Woolf use imagery in Kew Gardens?

The description of the flower bed in the first paragraph, with its erotic stalk imagery, references to 'heart-shaped or tongue-shaped leaves,' and the 'throats' of the flowers, immediately connects the human and the natural worlds. Within the latter there is an active aggressiveness of a quasi-human type, with the conditioning influences of the summer breeze, sun and light upon petals, the earth, pebbles, leaves and raindrops. The snail is similarly coloured by the setting, and operates within the natural world in terms of the problems it faces from lateral and linear choices of movement.